Mixing 101: What’s This Button Do?

 
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When you listen to live music, you’re hearing the performance from a two-point perspective, the points being each of your ears. When you hear recorded music, you’re getting a multi-point perspective since you’re listening through a number of individual microphones, or “ears,” that have been pressed in front of each instrument. Mixing makes individual tracks gel into one cohesive source and rekindles a vibe that the technicalities of recording have altered. 

Every mix engineer has their own process. Swearing by different signal chains, settings, hardware, and software, the voices of so many producers and engineers can unintentionally obscure the fundamentals of mixing. When you see seven articles that each say to use compression differently, or give contradictory advice on how to EQ sub-bass, what are you supposed to do? 

My completely unsatisfying answer is practice. All articles on recording and mixing (including these!) are guides that will work in some situations, sometimes. They are great to have as references, but they are not hard and fast rules. Not only are there too many variables, but you can’t put music through a strict paint by numbers process and get human, dynamic results. 

With that in mind, these next few articles will talk about mixing’s tools, techniques, and tricks that will point you in the right direction.  I’ve dropped a bunch of links to great resources on mixing at the end of this article, as well as links to the specific plugins that I reference. Especially in the context of home-recording, I encourage you to read widely and try things for yourself.

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If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. The same is true of mixing, if you don’t know what you are looking for (even vaguely) you’ll just end up twiddling knobs into oblivion. Understanding conventional workflows will help you to contextualize the tools you learn about as you go. This does not mean you must follow some ultimate, faultless workflow, but that following the example of others and modulating their process is an effective way to find what works for you. With that in mind, my mixing sessions usually go like this:

  1. Prep: I start by organizing my session. This is the time where I label each of my tracks, color code them, and create appropriate groups or buses*. I prefer to group all of the tracks related to one instrument or section of instruments. I send all of the drums to one bus, horns to another, vocals to a third, etc. Bussing this way allows me to process the tracks individually and as a whole section, which is important for creating cohesion. Once I am organized, it’s time to look into the sessions levels. 

  2. Volume Adjustments: I always make sure my tracks peak between -18 and -12dB to avoid driving the master channel. If they go above -12dB, I  lower the gain of the audio clip until its peak falls within that range. Next I’ll adjust the faders so the tracks are balanced loosely the way I hear in my head, strictly lowering the volume of less prominent tracks. 

    At this point, the track will sound quiet compared to finished songs on streaming services, but it should. Mastering is where the track’s overall volume is brought up to industry standard levels, mixing is where you adjust tone and dynamics so the tracks fit together. If you make your mix too loud, it will be difficult to master and your final product will not sound on par with other current productions. Another crucial step to making quality records is to check your phase.

  3. Phase: Phase issues are the result of time problems within your recordings. Think about scenarios where you have multiple microphones recording a single source from different positions, like drum kits. When the recording is replayed, the timing of the waveforms in each track will be slightly different because of the various distances the sound had to travel to reach each microphone.  These slight delays knock your  tracks out of phase with each other and can make them sound thin, tinny, or just odd. 

    Investigate the phase relationships of your tracks early. Check and make sure your overhead microphone isn’t out of phase with the other drum mics. If you recorded something with a microphone and DI, try nudging the DI track back a couple of milliseconds to see if you get a fuller sound. This is not to say you should by default fix every phase “issue.” Sometimes these issues are helpful at getting certain instruments to pop through the mix, so use your ears and make sure you aren’t doing more harm than good. If you want fine-tuned and detailed phase-correction tools, I’ve been using the Waves In-Phase plugin to align things down to a hundredth of a millisecond. 

  4. Leveling: DAWs give you the ability to automate volume changes (among other things) throughout the duration of your song. For example, if you want your vocals to get louder during the chorus, you can automate them so only the vocals in that section get boosted by a set volume. If I have songs with significant volume changes between the verses and the choruses, I’ll usually break them into pieces so that I can get the best processing for each section.

    If you have phrases or notes that are drastically louder than those around them, you can automate them to be quieter and fall more in line with the rest of the music. Dynamics are crucial, so the goal isn’t to make everything one volume, but rather to make each section more consistent so that, when you start compressing, you don’t squash your recordings. 

*Some DAWs call them buses, others groups, but they are the same thing.

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Getting each track ready is my least favorite part of mixing because it’s mostly technical editing and very little creative button-pushing. But without it, all the creative knob-spinning in the world won’t make your track sound as clean and polished as it would with a solid foundation. Steely-Dan was wrong, you’re a fool if you don’t do the dirty work and set yourself up for success. 

The next part of my mixing process is the fun stuff. It’s all the fancy plugins, creative decisions, and big changes. So, as mentioned earlier, the next part is even more up for interpretation. If I like one compressor, somebody else will say it’s trash. If I EQ before I compress, somebody else will call me a fool. Try different processes and then adjust them to fit your needs. 

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  1. Subtractive EQ: I apply subtractive EQ next. Assuming nothing needs special consideration, the rule of “cut narrow, boost wide” has served me well. Generally, I make cuts across narrow sets of frequencies, usually no steeper than -3dB to avoid making tracks sound unnatural. Occasionally I’ll go as low as -6dB, but unless I’m doing some wild, creative thing or hi/low-passing, that’s all I’ll cut. My goal with subtractive EQ is to carve small amounts of space in each track so that their collective frequencies puzzle-piece together nicely. By strictly lowering the volume of frequencies to begin with, I cut down on the chaos and cluster of sonic information instead of adding to it. It’s like cooking: if your soup is too salty don’t add more spices (boost EQ), throw in a potato to soak up the extra salt (subtract EQ) .

    To find frequencies that need cutting, I prefer spectral EQs for their additional visual aid. Most DAWs have one built in. I use the stock Ableton EQ  to save computing power and it works fine, but there are third-party plugins like the Infinity EQ from Slate Digital, the Eiosis AirEQ, or the FabFilter Pro Q that can do more detailed work. Once I’ve got my tracks  carved up the way they should be, I’ll start compressing.

  2. Compression: 90 percent of the time after applying subtractive equalization, I add compression. Sometimes I’ll compress after applying additive EQ and saturation, but not often. I’ll pick different compressors depending on what I am aiming for, and that choice varies as much by brand as by type. Over the last year I’ve grown partial to the Slate Digital plugins though some Izotope and Waves plugins have filtered in there, and there are also a fat stack of free plugins that I stand by. 

    For drums and bass I like FET compressors, like Slate’s FG-116 Modern, since they  sound punchy and heavy on low frequencies. For vocals and other mid/high frequency instruments, I like VCA and optical compressors;  the FG-Stress and FG-401, both from Slate, are excellent choices. Izotope makes a really neat plugin called Neutron that has a nice compressor in it too, and the Focusrite RED 3 is also great. 

    As a general rule, I  keep my attack times long and my release times short, aiming for around -3dB to -5dB of gain reduction. The long attack of the compressor allows the initial attack of a sound (called the transient) to come through unaffected before the compressor kicks in. The fast release allows the effect to kick back off in a smooth way with the end of the sound. This lets the compressor shape each note or hit more consistently without altering the sound in an unnatural way. That said, I generally use a couple different types of compression set slightly differently. For a quick intro, long attack time, short release time will get you pretty far. 

  3. Additive EQ/Saturation: After my tracks are compressed, I’ll start using additive EQ and saturation. This step is probably the most subjective in the whole process. My only suggestion here is to use plugins that add interesting and appropriate textures; I use a lot of analog emulations: EQs, pre-amps, channel strips, and tape machines. When manipulating additive EQ/Saturation, my goal is to make the song pop, give it some shimmer and thump. Usually this means that I’ll lift the high frequencies above around 10k by about 2 or 3dB. Depending on the instrument I’ll give a small notch up wherever its attack is sitting and mix in some tube or tape saturation to taste. 

    All of the Slate stuff is killer for this as it usually colors the sound in a nice way. Soundtoys has some good stuff in their Effects Rack as well, and I love Izotope’s re-released Vinyl plugin. I have heard bucketloads of good reviews about the XLN Audio RC-20 Retro, but the price has kept me away since I already have a bunch of stuff that works for me. When things start sounding cohesive and clear, it’s time to try and float them into a space.

  4. Spatial Effects: Spatial effects fall under the umbrella of delay, reverb, and panning. While the way you employ these effects is taste-sensitive, it’s easy to go overboard here. 

    You don’t want to clutter the clean mix you just made with a wash of delay and reverb, so start by keeping your delay and decay times shorter; nothing over a second. Keep in mind that our ears are an intuitive part of our bodies that recognize things we might not consciously pick up on, like the shape of the room you are in. If you use three different room reverbs simultaneously, your ears can get confused because it sounds like they are in three different rooms at once. This is why I like complimenting plate reverbs with room reverbs since plates don’t give your ears an idea of where they are in space. Verbsuite Classics  is my go-to reverb at the moment, but I also like the  Valhalla Supermassive for its psychedelic sounds. For delays, I prefer tape simulations for their warmth and the D16 Repeater has a lot of great sounding options.

    For panning, conventional wisdom says some things need to stay in the center of the mix. This is so that when your stereo mix is converted down to mono (if it were to be played on the radio for example) your mix doesn’t radically change. Kick, bass, snare, and lead vocals should be panned center. Everything else is pretty much up to your discretion. A common way to mix is either from musicians perspective, panning things left and right as if you were performing with the band, or audience perspective which is just musicians perspective flipped. Personally, I almost always  end up with some cluster of the two because I am a contrarian and I can. 

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As you mix, check your decisions on several speakers. I mix on JBL MKII 305s, but periodically check on both a set of Edifier bookshelf speakers and my Samson SR850 mixing headphones. Mixing headphones are great for double checking your bass which is often distorted by the likely-less-than-ideal acoustics of your room. My car and my laptop are my final testing sites. If my mix translates well to both, I know I have a stable mix that will sound good on hi-fi speakers and the little tin cans in our phones. 

The next few articles will cover each of these steps more in depth.  Following mixing, we’ll go over how to prep your mix for mastering. Below are links to some other resources to check out if you want to continue learning in the meantime. Take care of yourselves, train your ears, and happy mixing! 


With care,

Talkback

 
Shane Wells